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This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through January 25)

These were our favorite articles in science and tech this week.

SingularityHub Staff
Jan 25, 2025
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Open-Source DeepSeek-R1 Uses Pure Reinforcement Learning to Match OpenAI o1—at 95% Less Cost Shubham Sharma | VentureBeat

"Based on the recently introduced DeepSeek V3 mixture-of-experts model, DeepSeek-R1 matches the performance of o1, OpenAI’s frontier reasoning LLM, across math, coding, and reasoning tasks. The best part? It does this at a much more tempting cost, proving to be 90-95% more affordable than the latter."

OpenAI’s Operator Lets ChatGPT Use the Web for You Will Knight | Wired

"The new tool, called Operator, is an AI agent: It relies on an AI model trained on both text and images to interpret commands and figure out how to use a web browser to execute them. OpenAI claims it has the potential to automate many day-to-day tasks and workday errands."

Sam Altman's World Now Wants to Link AI Agents to Your Digital Identity Maxwell Zeff | TechCrunch

"Altman’s World project now wants to create tools that link certain AI agents to people’s online personas, letting other users verify that an agent is acting on a person’s behalf, according to its chief product officer, Tiago Sada. World, a web3 project by Altman and Alex Blania’s Tools for Humanity that was formerly known as Worldcoin, is based on the idea that it will eventually be impossible to distinguish humans from AI agents on the internet."

The Second Wave of AI Coding Is Here Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review

"Instead of providing developers with a kind of supercharged autocomplete, like most existing tools, this next generation can prototype, test, and debug code for you. ...But there’s more. Many of the people building generative coding assistants think that they could be a fast track to artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical superhuman technology that a number of top firms claim to have in their sights."

Tech Leaders Pledge Up to $500 Billion in AI Investment in US Deepa Seetharaman | The Wall Street Journal

"The joint venture, known as Stargate, is led by the ChatGPT maker OpenAI and the global tech investor SoftBank Group. It will build data centers for OpenAI. The database company Oracle and MGX, an investor backed by the United Arab Emirates, are also equity partners in the venture. The companies are committing $100 billion to the venture and plan to invest up to $500 billion over the next four years."

China's WeRide Wants to Build Global Robotaxi Empire Jiahui Huang | The Wall Street Journal

"China is on the verge of large-scale robotaxi commercialization, Daiwa analysts said in a recent note. They expect the market for robotaxi-related car manufacturing and auto components to reach 160 billion yuan, equivalent to about $22 billion, by 2026. Eventually, robotaxis are likely to completely replace traditional ride-hailing vehicles, they said."

Researchers Optimize Simulations of Molecules on Quantum Computers John Timmer | Ars Technica

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"On Wednesday, Nature Physics published a paper that describes the simulation of some aspects of simple catalysts on quantum computers and provides a way to dramatically simplify the calculations. The resulting algorithmic improvements mean that we may not need to wait for error correction to run useful simulations."

When AI Passes This Test, Look Out Kevin Roose | The New York Times

"[Humanity's Last Exam] consists of roughly 3,000 multiple-choice and short answer questions designed to test AI systems’ abilities in areas ranging from analytic philosophy to rocket engineering. Questions were submitted by experts in these fields, including college professors and prizewinning mathematicians, who were asked to come up with extremely difficult questions they knew the answers to."

This Company Wants to Build a Space Station That Has Artificial Gravity Emilio Cozzi | Wired

"The company is aiming to launch a commercial space station, the Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, which would allow astronauts to stay in space after the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. In doing so, it is attempting to muscle in on NASA’s plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations—but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for what it will eventually put into space: a station that has its own artificial gravity."

Why the Next Energy Race Is for Underground Hydrogen Casey Crownhart | MIT Technology Review

"It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits of hydrogen."

What’s Next for Robots James O'Donnell | MIT Technology Review

"We’ve been sold lots of promises that robots will transform society ever since the first robotic arm was installed on an assembly line at a General Motors plant in New Jersey in 1961. Few of those promises have panned out so far. But this year, there’s reason to think that even those staunchly in the 'bored' camp will be intrigued by what’s happening in the robot races. Here’s a glimpse at what to keep an eye on."

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